Voters deliver rebuke over Greenland minerals rush

Reuters, NUUK

Aleqa Hammond, center, leader of the opposition Siumut party, is seen with her boyfriend Tom Ostermann, left, and Nikku Olsen of the Partii Inuit after her party won national elections in Nuuk, Greenland, on Wednesday.

Photo: EPA

An Inuit woman brought up to skin seals looked set to become Greenland’s first female prime minister after a backlash against foreign miners and fears over environmental damage carried her party to election victory.

Aleqa Hammond’s Siumut party won 42 percent of votes and about 14 seats in the 31-seat parliament, meaning she will need to form a coalition. Greenland Prime Minister Kuupik Kleist won about 34 percent of votes, according to official results on Wednesday.

EXPLOITATION

The opening of the country of 57,000 people to international miners aroused concern among its indigenous Inuit people, many of whom rely on fishing for a living and fear both Chinese exploitation of their mineral resources and the risks of pollution from heavy industries.

“We are welcoming companies and countries that are interested in investing in Greenland,” Hammond said in an interview. “At the same time we have to be aware of the consequences as a people.”

“Greenland should work with countries that have the same values as we have, on how human rights should be respected. We are not giving up our values for investors sake,” she said.

With sea ice thawing and new shipping routes opening in the Arctic, the former Cold War ally of the West has emerged from isolation and gained geopolitical attention from the likes of Beijing and Brussels thanks to its untapped mineral wealth and potential offshore oil and gas. “Greenland will be entering new challenges regarding new industries,” said Hammond, who speaks English, German, Greenlandic and Danish.

“The outside world will be experiencing leadership of Greenland where the leader is strong in terms of traditions and culture and at the same time is global,” she added.

Hammond said she would take a more critical look at Chinese mining investments in Greenland, a country that is a quarter the size of the US, and raise royalties on miners.

Despite her international pedigree — Hammond studied in Montreal and became a tourism manager in Greenland — the 47-year-old is very conscious of her roots.

Her father died when she was young after he fell through ice while hunting. At the age of 13 she won permission from the Bishop of Greenland to change her Danish first name to a Greenlandic name.

“From an early stage I was very determined about my understanding of who I am, my culture and language,” she said.

“I was raised to be a hunter’s wife. I know how to make boots, pants for a hunter and I know how to scrape seal and reindeer skins and dry them thanks to my grandmother,” she said.

Her mother cried for two days when she realized her firstborn was a girl, not a boy. Her name means “big sister to young brothers.” Her family tried to make her marry a hunter.

“But no one is marrying women who talk too much,” she said with self-deprecating humor at her campaign headquarters.

There is still a broad consensus in Greenland that foreign investment is needed to help bring in revenues and wean the self-governing country off an annual grant from former colonial master Denmark that pays for more than half its budget.

BIG MINING

However, one of the most controversial plans is a proposal for a US$2.3 billion mining project by British-based London Mining PLC near Nuuk that could supply iron ore to China. About 2,000 Chinese workers could be flown in for its construction.